A wonderful cat lover in Colorado was so proud of cooking for her kitties and I felt bad bursting her bubble – I had to write her:
I know you’re so enthused about cooking for your cat, that I hate to rain on your parade but even the most elaborate recipes can get you in trouble if they aren’t balanced for a cat’s dietary needs. As noted elsewhere, cats lack taurine which needs to be added to their food in order for their bodies to process it properly. In addition, they need both the bone and the organ meats so in order to properly make homemade food you’d need a commercial food grinders through which you would put the entire chicken – and then you’d STILL have to add the taurine, and in the correct amount. Therefore, if you want to continue cooking, you need to keep all that in mind which is why Weruva and Spot’s Stew are such great canned foods, probably even better than cooking yourself.
Tracie – Hmm… interesting. What you say is true… I just was thinking that I was doing the best by making them their food… being fresh and not out of a can.
I was adding taurine, the organ meat from the chicken and buying chicken liver to add in their food, but not the bones. I’ll see if I can find the Weruva locally.
So I quickly wrote her back:
I salute you for cooking, really. Because the less processed and fresher a food is, we KNOW it has to be better. But what I’ll say about Weruva’s chicken is that it is a antibiotic-free, hormone-free and free range — nobody can afford to use that quality of chicken for themselves nowadays, much less for their pets, But don’t quit cooking if you’re enjoying the food-is-love aspect, go for it! You might also consider supplementing with Platinum Performance which balances home made diets and is linked on my website. I’m sending you a sample with your signed bookplate for your copy of THE CAT BIBLE.
Tracie – I just want to say thank you for everything. I mean really. I just wish that I was up to speed on all this years ago so that my cats could have been eating better. They are just on their “tail” end of their lives and they have given our family such love and enjoyment that to think that all these years we have been feeding them that dry stuff all this time. I just figure they deserve to have the best that we can provide for them for whatever time that we have left with them
